Armory
Summary An irradiated town of ghouls located around (and beneath) the ruins of the regional airport between the cities of Odessa and Midland. Thanks to the infrastructure remaining beneath what was a National Guard Armory, it is now the power plant that provides electricity to the towns of the Midessa Compact. History Pre-War Midland International Airport was originally Sloan Field, a small airport started in 1927 by Samuel Addison Sloan. Sloan leased 220 acres of flat grassland from Clarence Scharbauer, a rancher. Sam Sloan was killed in 1929, and his brother, William Harvey Sloan, continued the operation. In 1939 Harvey Sloan sold the field to the City of Midland for $14,500. Prominent businessmen in Midland could foresee the possibility of a military base in West Texas. In 1940, after Hitler struck Poland, they started promoting the airport for use as a training base to the military establishment in Washington. Work was done by the WPA with more runway and taxiway improvements, as well as airfield lighting. A visit by Brigadier General G.C. Brant, Commander of the Gulf Coast Air Corps Training Center at Randolph Field was made and he reported that the situation at Midland was very favorable. It was on Friday, June 13, 1941, that it was announced that Midland would get the air school.src After World War II the field eventually became a commercial airport and the area became host to related businesses, a post office, and a national guard armory. There was some flirtation with the idea of adding the necessary support infrastructure to make the airport suitable for use as a spaceport in the 2010s though little came of it. At some point in the 2060s however the nascent Enclave tapped the area as a good site for a storage and refueling depot, to create a redundancy in a post-war supply chain. With the National Guard busy dealing with civil unrest, Enclave backed contractors were able to create a labyrinthine substructure beneath the armory with no fuss. However just before the advent of the Great War, the hidden bunker was discovered by the local commanding officer of the National Guard attached to the site. He covertly planned to have his troops and their families occupy the bunker, to wait out the war and reclaim the area once it was safe with the benefit of the water, electric power, and weaponry it provided. When the United States was bombed in the Great War, the Midland Airport was targeted, with a single bomb detonating overhead and collapsing all the local buildings. This had the added benefit of irradiating the area between Odessa and Midland to impede travel, and spreading fallout to both cities thanks to the pervasive west Texas wind. Post-War For a time a group of national guardsmen and their dependents took shelter in the bunker underneath the armory. They endured and their descendants would grow up in safety. This shelter had not been built for their use however, and eventually the true owners came calling. When Enclave forces retreated from the west coast, a detachment swung through the area to tap what was one of their many supply depots. In 2246 the inhabitants of the bunker were surprised when the robots that had been inactive since they occupied the place were remotely activated and began moving pallets of supplies around. Their surprise turned to terror when the door to the shelter opened effortlessly, and men and women in power armor strolled in and opening fire on them. Satisfied that the "squatters" had been eliminated, the soldiers carried the boxes of munitions and supplies out and into their awaiting vertibirds. Before they departed for good, they changed the robots settings to make them kill anyone else who intruded, as a method of covering their tracks. The soldiers had missed a single resident however, a young computer engineer who hid and watched the slaughter from the shadows. He was able to program and fabricate an "Identify Friend/Foe" (IFF) pass card, which would allow him to leave and re-enter the bunker without being attacked by the robots. This engineer then left the bunker and headed east, hoping to find help in Odessa. He made it to Mesa but the trip had given him a terminal case of radiation poisoning, beyond what the townsfolk could treat. They did their best to make him comfortable and ease his passing, during which time he related his story and presented them with the IFF pass. The people of Mesa reported this incident at a meeting of the Midessa Compact. The contemporary Salt Family patriarch suggested that the ghouls of the various communities take the IFF and claim the bunker for themselves. He sensed an opportunity to exploit the irradiated area between Petroleum and the other compact towns, as well as an opportunity to get all the unsightly ghouls out of town without violence. The ghouls got together and agreed to this, and were able to use the IFF pass to deactivate the robots and claim the bunker. In the ensuing weeks of exploration and cataloging, they discovered that they could use the machinery in the bunker to accomplish something truly great: create a new power grid for the region. The town of Armory was born. Economy Because they cannot grow their own crops and because their neighbors would not want irradiated ghoul handcrafts, the employee owned Armory Electric Company (AEC) is effectively synonymous with the town's economy. It is the largest employer, followed by the municipal government. AEC digs trenches for electric cables, wires homes and businesses, performs repairs and maintenance of electrical equipment, and other related duties and services. They charge for service calls and they charge per kilowatt hour of electricity, to the tune of $10/hour. Because the cost of electricity is so high in the Midessa Compact, it is never wasted. Notable Places The Armory Bunker Government The Ghouls maintain a Pre-War American style government with elements drawn from the municipal and county levels for the most part: Armory is governed by an elected mayor, it's laws are enforced by an elected sheriff, and the court is overseen by an appointed judge. Because as far as they know, they can potentially live forever, the Ghouls have set term limits so that no one may serve as mayor or sheriff for more than fifty consecutive years before taking a five-term break from politics. The court is used so rarely that the judge is basically a lifetime appointment unless recalled by the community. Armory is subject to the bylaws of the Midessa Compact. Culture The Ghouls of Armory are extremely industrious. They have come to believe that a highly regimented lifestyle is vital to staving off "the madness," that feral ghouls experience. They tend to be extremely nosy busybodies who take a dim view of loners in the community. Layout Armory is located north of old I-20. It is 11 miles east of Mesa and 10 miles west of Petroleum. The original surface level structures were leveled during the Great War, so all of the modern structures are made from the scrap. Most of this was recovered from the ruins of the Midland International Airport. Most of the town's vital functions take place in the mostly intact Enclave bunker underneath what was a National Guard Armory, a little to the southwest of the main community erected on the old airport runways. Category:Places Category:Communities Category:Texas